One Salt Sea
Page 101

When I emerged five minutes later, still dragging a brush through my hair, it was to find the Luidaeg and my Fetch engaged in a hushed, rapid-fire conversation that stopped as soon as they saw me. May glanced away, a flash of guilt in her expression. The Luidaeg, meanwhile, looked me up and down, assessing my attire: black dress slacks, the dark green cashmere sweater from Shadowed Hills, and a pair of black flats. Finally, she nodded.
“That should be acceptable. Get your keys.”
“Glad you approve. May, we’ll be back later.”
“I’ll be here,” she said, mustering a small, not-quitesteady smile. I couldn’t quite make myself return it as I grabbed my jacket from the rack, checking to be sure my car keys were still in the front pocket, and followed the Luidaeg outside.
“Where are we going?” I asked again, once we were both seated in the car, me with my seat belt fastened, her without. I didn’t see any reason to argue. It wasn’t like she’d let us get pulled over. “I sort of need to know which direction to go.”
“Half Moon Bay,” she said, settling deeper in her seat. She made a complicated gesture with her hands, and there was a silk-swathed bundle that smelled of fur and seawater stretched across her knees. “I have something to return to Roan Rathad.”
I paled. “Luidaeg, is that . . .”
“One is Elaine’s, most recently worn by Margie Atwater. The other is Owain’s, most recently worn by Connor O’Dell.” She touched the silk covering the skins with an almost caressing hand. “We’re taking them home.”
There was nothing I could say to that. I started the car.
San Francisco to Half Moon Bay isn’t an inconsiderable drive. We’d been on the road for half an hour, neither of us saying anything, when the Luidaeg suddenly said, “We’re square, you know. There are no debts between us.”
“Swell.” And all it cost was Connor’s life, and maybe Gilly’s sanity. “I’ll try not to need a favor any time soon.”
“That would be an interesting change.” The Luidaeg glanced at me. “How are you doing?”
“Doing? I get up. I eat. I go back to bed. The bills are paid for at least another month before I need to do anything else.” More than a month, actually. Sylvester insisted on paying for everything until I felt like I could deal with working. Normally, I would have refused, but he was my liege, and his daughter was the reason I was in mourning. If he wanted to pay my rent, that was his call.
“I asked how, not what.”
“I really don’t know, Luidaeg. I really don’t.”
“It gets better.” She ran her fingers across the silk again, sighing. “It doesn’t go away, but it gets better. Believe me, if it didn’t, I would have followed my sisters to the night-haunts’ table years ago.”
“That shouldn’t help, but it does,” I admitted. I took a deep breath, and said, “Luidaeg, about the night-haunts . . .”
Her sidelong glance was troubled, her eyes skittering over me and away again in an instant. “Don’t,” she said, voice somewhere between gentle and cautioning. “They look like the people we lose, but they’re not. They’re only ever themselves.”
“That’s not what I want to ask.”
“Then what?”
“The night-haunts are connected to the Fetches somehow, aren’t they?” Her nod was all but imperceptible. I pressed on. “How?”
“When they were born, they were predators. Killers. It was how Faerie made them, but they took too much. Father couldn’t have that, and so he bound them to eat only the dead. To make it stick, he . . . changed them. Every taste of living blood became a lottery, and a death sentence for a member of the flock.”
“Because one of them will be called as a Fetch for the person whose blood they taste,” I finished.
“Yes.”
“May . . .”
“Was called after you shared blood with the night-haunts. She wore a hundred faces before ever donning yours.” Again that skittering sidelong glance. “She was the only one who tasted your offering to them; she chose to be a Fetch for you. She wanted to give you time to prepare.”
“Because I was her hero,” I said softly, remembering the flock as I’d first seen it—and the flock as I’d seen it for the second time. Dare’s haunt vanished between the two appearances. The night-haunt with the face and memories of a girl who believed in me, and who I failed to save. “Does she remember?”
“Bits and pieces. The memories of the fallen were only ever masks she wore. Yours was going to be the last. In a way, it still is.”
“Yeah.” I laughed a little, unsteadily. “This explains a lot.”
“Does it explain why she didn’t want to tell you?”
“I don’t know that I would have wanted to tell me. But it doesn’t change anything.”
“Be sure to tell her that when you get home. She’s been worried.” The Luidaeg’s attention suddenly focused on the road. “Take the next exit,” she said.
“Got it.” I followed her directions, asking, “Why are we doing this? I didn’t get the impression that you were a big fan of the Selkies.”
“Because it’s polite. Because it’s the right thing to do. And because once upon a time, they brought the dead home to me. Because I love them.” The Luidaeg shook her head. “I hate the Selkies for what they are, but I need them to keep the skins they wear alive.”
I hesitated. “Luidaeg, what’s the connection between the Selkies and the Roane?”
“Turn left at the end of this street.” Her tone made it clear that my question would not be answered. I nodded, accepting that, and drove on.
The Luidaeg’s directions took us down increasingly obscure streets, all of them scrupulously maintained. We finally turned onto a private drive that wound almost all the way around a small hill before stopping at a beachfront house large enough to be a bed-and-breakfast. It was a classic Victorian, with extensions pointing off in every direction, making it clear that construction had never really ended.
The driveway was packed with cars, and every light in the house looked like it was on, creating an artificial twilight that extended well beyond the walls. The Luidaeg smiled at me, just a little, as we got out. “I need you to do me a favor,” she said.